An Unkindness of Ravens Read online

  “About what?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t think this is the same killer as the two bodies found in the forest,” Tyler said.

  “Who said I think that?” she asked, wary of him now.

  “I have extremely good hearing in certain settings,” he said, “I heard you say it to your partner at the scene in Warrenton.”

  “So what are you going to write?”

  “Well, I have a duty to my paper and the readers to tell them what I know,” he said shrugging. Sarah was confused by him; was he hinting at some deal? Did he want to trade his silence for now for something else, some other information?

  “I’m surprised you haven’t published online already,” she said.

  “It’s only a click of a button away,” he said, taking his phone out for emphasis.

  “Why do you agree it could be a second killer?” she asked after taking another sip of her beer.

  “Everything is different,” he said, leaning against the bar facing her now that he had his own drink.

  “Lots of similarities though,” she said.

  “Some similarities,” Tyler said, “But nothing he couldn’t have seen in the papers.”

  “Well,” Sarah said, finishing off her drink, “I better be getting home. I shouldn’t be talking to you about this anyway.” She scolded herself for chatting to him like this. He was very handsome and disarming, but she had to remember he was a reporter and would always have an agenda.

  “Best of luck catching these guys,” he said as she walked away.

  When Sarah got home, her mind was back on the case and she was annoyed by this. Since talking to Tyler in the bar she’d been running over the differences in the killings in her mind and had come home on complete autopilot, not remembering a moment of it.

  “You’re home,” Marcus said, getting up from the sofa as she closed the door. He walked over and kissed her on the cheek. “Rough day?” he asked, and she knew he could see it in her face.

  “Frustrating is a better word,” she said. She could feel the agitation in his body as he hugged her. It hurt her to do it, but she had to keep working tonight. He most likely already knew this, but it still wasn’t fair on him.

  “I read about some of it in the papers,” he said, “You got mentioned a few times on a couple of websites.” This was his way of getting her to say she was going to work tonight, an edge to his voice and his eyes cast to the computer screen on the sofa as he spoke.

  “He’s a sicko and we need to catch him,” she said. He nodded grimly.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” he said, and he started walking down the hall to the bathroom. “There’s pasta in the oven if you haven’t eaten yet.”

  “I’ll be as quick as I can,” she said after him, but it was weak and she knew she shouldn’t have said it. He would most likely be asleep before she was done, and they both knew it.

  It felt like a pivotal moment and she called after him,

  “Marcus.” He turned to look at her. “What do you say we get away somewhere for a week when we get this guy. Just you and me?” His smile was forlorn and he nodded.

  “That would be great,” he said, but she could see he didn’t believe it was going to happen. He went into the bathroom and the door closed gently.

  What had happened to them? Sarah wondered. Things had started off so well, and the very fact that they lived together was a sign of how good it had once been. When did it start to go wrong? She couldn't pinpoint it, but she was sure it was her fault. And yet all she could think of right now was scouring over maps of the search area and looking for more ways to catch these killers. It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 5

  Tyler Ford sat at his window desk in the offices of the Baltimore Echo on West Lexington Street. He was reading through a printed copy of his article and making edits with a pen. Rain trickled down the panes, and he looked out and could just make out the rooftop of the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum on Amity Street around the corner. Tyler hadn’t been there in a long time, and he made a mental note to pay a visit soon.

  “You ready to hit publish on that thing yet?” The gruff voice of Derek Davis filled the room, and Tyler turned to look at his boss.

  “A few more minutes,” he said, looking back down to the pages in his hand.

  “You’re killing me here, Tyler,” Davis said, “Who knows when the others will get this news of a second killer. We need this out now so we’re still ahead!”

  “Ten minutes, boss,” Tyler said, “And it’s done.” Davis walked off back to his office muttering something under his breath. Tyler smiled. Davis was such a caricature of press editors as they were portrayed in the movies. Always shouting and always in a rush.

  The edits were done now, and Tyler read the article once more on the computer to be sure he was happy with it. He thought about meeting Sarah Brightwater last night in the bar and how she hadn’t asked him not to publish what he knew. She looked tired, and he wondered had she regretted that when she got home. It would likely cause her some pressure at work, but the truth was the truth and it wasn’t his job to hide it.

  It hadn’t been entirely true that he’d been working on another story in the bar last night. His informant at the FBI Academy had told him of the problems Sarah was having with her partner and her boss in relation to the second killer idea. Tyler had then followed her when she left work, hoping to get a chance to talk to her, but also curious if she was going to do some more investigating on her own time.

  “Ready to go, Boss,” he called out from his desk. Davis appeared at the door of his office.

  “Go for it,” he said. Tyler was in a rare position for a journalist in that his editor didn’t often read his articles before allowing them to be published, especially online. Every few weeks Davis would ask for an article to read before giving the go ahead, but he rarely made any changes.

  Tyler clicked on the publish button and the Baltimore Echo website was updated. The story of a second killer was now live. Tyler watched the site visitor counter for a moment or two, as he knew Davis would be too from his own computer. The number rose by five or six every couple of seconds. The story was gaining traction and those numbers would jump to the hundreds per second very soon.

  He scrolled to the comments section at the bottom of the story and waited for the readers to start their conversations. He loved this part. Loved seeing the reactions to what he’d written and also enjoyed the spats and arguments that would inevitably flare up as the comments thread grew.

  “Yes!” Davis shouted out from his desk as Tyler saw the words ‘2nd Serial Killer!’ come up in the comments. That was sure to get things moving.

  “Should keep the advertisers happy for a while,” Tyler called out to him.

  It was late in the afternoon, and Tyler and Davis were the only people in the office. There were five other journalists and an admin person working out of the office, but they were all out on stories save the admin woman, June, who was on holidays at the moment. It was rarely this quiet.

  Tyler leaned back in his chair and stretched and yawned. As he did so, he noticed that his post tray had a pile of letters in it. He’d been working on this story the last few days, so had been out of the office and hadn’t noticed them when he came in here today. He flicked through them, tossing aside the junk mail and then started opening the seven letters that were left.

  They were the usual stuff, a couple of fan letters, a few with ideas for stories and one that wanted to become his life insurer. The last letter was by far the most interesting however. It read:

  Dear Tyler Ford,

  I have been following your articles for some time now and I have to admit I am impressed. As such, I would like to help you with the advancement of your career.

  You have heard of the bodies found in Whitney State Forest by now, and I am sure you are working eagerly as you all await the third body.

  My advice is to stick with this story. Don’t let anything else distract y
ou. You will thank me for this one day,

  Yours.

  T.K

  Tyler reread the short letter with great interest. There was something here that he knew he was missing but what? This person was very cryptic but also very specific. What was he saying? His first thought was that this was a letter from the killer, but he knew that would be a long shot. How likely was it that a killer would go to ‘The Baltimore Echo’ rather than ‘The Washington Post’ or ‘New York Times’? Still, it was possible. He put the letter in his pocket, there was no need to bring this to Davis’ attention yet. Not until Tyler could ascertain if it was really something to be interested in.

  “I’m going home,” he said, getting up and taking his jacket from the back of his chair.

  “You don’t want to watch your adoring fans descend into name calling?” Davis asked and Tyler heard the smile in his voice.

  “I can see it all at home, don’t forget this is the internet age you dinosaur,” Tyler laughed, standing in the editor’s doorway, “What's up there doesn't go away.”

  Tyler drove the twenty-five minutes to his home on the Patapsco River outside Ellicott City in silence, the letter burning a hole in his pocket. He went through the sentences he was sure he’d remembered and then the gist of the ones he wasn’t sure on. What was T.K. saying, and most important of all, who was T.K.? Why did he care so much about Tyler’s career? The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that the killer was talking to him. Could T.K. simply stand for The Killer - could it be that simple?

  Tyler's two-story home stood a good distance back off the main road hidden behind tall trees, and his back door was only thirty yards from the riverbank. A floating deck jutted out with a chair and small writing desk on it that he left there in all weathers. He liked to sit out there and listen to the trees and the river even when he wasn’t writing something.

  Inside, the house was tidy and clean with exposed stone walls and wooden beams. He wasn't much of an interior designer and almost everything he owned bore an Ikea tag. Still, the place looked well and was comfortable. A large stone fireplace was the main feature of the living room, and he often used wood from his own land to fuel it. Normally on a cool evening like this, lighting that fire would have been the first thing he would do, but he was too antsy about the letter to care about anything else right now.

  Tyler walked into the kitchen, reading the letter as he went. He never took his eyes off it, and he took a pizza from the freezer and put it in the oven. He set a timer, knowing he would lose track of time studying the letter.

  Sitting at his inside work desk, his lamp’s bright light trained on the paper, he must have read the letter at least forty times. He scrutinised each word, each punctuation mark. Then he looked at the word usage and those final initials. What did it mean? Was it anything?

  He’d set the envelope the letter came in down on the desk when he sat, but now he took this up and gave it the same scrutiny he’d given the letter. Looking at the letters of the address and the stamp - a local Virginia one - and then....

  The post office stamp! It was dated February 4th! The day before the second body was found!

  “It’s him!” Tyler called out, jumping to his feet. Only the killer could have posted a letter on the fourth knowing that there was a second body in Whitney State Forest before even the police knew. A rush of excitement came over him and he picked up the phone. He was going to call Davis and tell him what had happened, but something stayed him.

  Tyler stood there and put the phone back down on the table. He was the only person in the world who knew what was going on right now. There could be something big in the works for himself if he played this correctly. What should he do?

  He wasn’t going to act rashly. He sat down. The killer had opened up a line of communication with him. He wanted to talk. The worst thing he could do right now was to scare him away with a big media circus. He made a decision to keep this to himself for the time being. He needed to think, he needed to sleep on it.

  Something big was happening in the life of Tyler Ford.

  Chapter 6

  Sarah slammed down the phone and stood up at her desk.

  “They found the car,” she said, already on her way out of the office. Malick stood up and came after her.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Hidden in some underbrush in Shenandoah Park,” she said.

  “Shenandoah?” Malick said, “How far away is that?”

  “From here it’s only about a hundred miles. We can be there in less than two hours,” Sarah said. She was geed up, she was sure this was going to turn into something tangible. As she’d predicted, the car was covered in blood, and she knew the second killer was going to have left something behind too.

  “Shouldn't we tell the ASAC where we’re going?” Malick said.

  “We can call him on the way, come on.” The animosity the two had shared a couple of days previous was all gone now. It was par for the course, and she respected her partner that he didn’t back down on these things just like her. They always got past these issues and worked well together. Tough talking and arguing was all just part of the job.

  “What did they tell you about the car?” Malick asked as they drove out onto the interstate.

  “Some tourists saw it and reported it, but thankfully they hadn’t gone near it.”

  “That would have been a grisly find on your vacation,” Malick smiled.

  “It looks, and smelled apparently, like some animal had been in the car too, urinated or scented the place, so we’ll have some evidence to discount here too.”

  “I suppose it’s too much to expect there was a licence or registration documents in there?”

  “Actually there was. The car belongs to Fred Digba, resident of Palmyra. He reported the car stolen the night before the body was found.”

  “Palmyra?”

  “It’s not too far from Shenandoah,” she informed him. Sarah hadn’t known this, but the officer on the phone had told her, expecting she probably wouldn’t have heard of it before.

  “Fred Digba checks out?”

  “Seems to, but local PD are going to go back and talk to him some more to be sure.”

  “So we have a location of where the killer was in the hours before the murder,” Malick nodded thoughtfully.

  “And from that we’ll soon know the route and where the victim came from and who they are,” Sarah said and then, not able to resist it, “I told you there was a second killer here. This guy is leaving trails all over the place, nothing like ‘The Cleaner.’” Malick smiled at her and then raised his eyebrows,

  “You’re going to stick with ‘The Cleaner’?”

  “I haven't heard anything better yet,” she smiled back.

  “Well I got to say I heard one last night that’s going to stick with me for now.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, ‘John the Baptist’!” They both burst out laughing at this one for a moment, but it was brief. That name did have the religious ring to it that Sarah had mentioned in her profile. It talked to how seriously he took the cleaning of the bodies too. She wondered who had come up with that one. It showed a level of insight that took her by surprise.

  “Where did you hear that one?” she asked, though she already thought she knew the answer.

  “It was on ‘The Baltimore Echo’ website,” Malick said and then nudging her with his elbow added, “Your boyfriend, Tyler Ford, wrote it!”

  “Where are you getting that he’s my boyfriend out of this?” she asked, nudging him back with her own hard elbow.

  “I saw you giving the dreamboat the once over both in Whitney and at the roadside the other day,” he laughed.

  “You’ve got an active imagination, I’ll give you that,” Sarah said, “Why don’t you try turning those skills towards the case so we can get this solved quicker!”. She gave him a sudden jab in the ribs as she finished this sentence and he was winded. They both laughed as the car sped towards Shenan
doah National Park.

  The abandoned car was an old Honda, the kind you’d see anywhere in America. Tan in colour and a few early signs of rust along the bottom of the driver side panels. It had been driven down a slight incline and covered up with large loose branches. It was poorly done, and the car had been spotted easily enough by the first people who happened by this way.

  The stink inside was terrible, and Sarah could only imagine how pungent it had been earlier when whatever it was had been fresh. She was glad she hadn’t been the one doing the forensic search then. The Forensics team were still at work, but Sarah could see that they had already taken shoe mouldings around the site and one that looked like it was coming from the car. Jesus, she thought, this guy is terrible.

  “What’s gone back to the lab so far?” she asked the head of the forensics team, a blonde woman she’d didn’t know.

  “Multiple hair and fibre samples, and prints galore,” she said, smiling.

  “On the steering wheel?” Malick asked.

  “On everything, and some of them bloody too,” she shook her head, “It’s like he didn’t care at all. Like he wanted to be caught.”

  Sarah agreed; this was bullshit. It looked as though both the murder and the finger amputation had taken place in the car itself. One of the rear side windows was cracked too in a sign of a struggle. There was no way in hell this was the same guy as before.

  “The prints have gone to the AFIS already?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes, that was one of the first things we did.”

  “Good work,” Sarah said. If he was in the system, they would have a match in a couple of hours. Let’s hope he’s in the system.

  Local police were checking traffic cameras and premises with CCTV on all possible routes from Palmyra to where the body was found. They were confident they were going to get some images on this. They were also looking into any missing persons reports in Palmyra but had nothing current on that.

  “We’ll have him by sundown,” Malick said. Sarah and he were standing alone now looking down on the car.